Yes! Why not! I'm more than "a tad" older than you and can see all the inappropriate plantings here and wish I'd not been so adamant, stubborn and even enthisiastic and passionate back then. I'd like to imagine you 20 years from now enjoying the beautiful fragrance of your plantings and not having to remember, looking at your aged, sore and tired hands, how hard was the task of taming and imprisoning the devil in lilac! There comes a time when even one's passion becomes a chore...Nobody is exempt. My hands are crippled with arthritis. I cannot get a grip on my brushes, thus the hard work has deprived me of a pleasure and a passion....that is the way it is for many so I hope you are immune. Unfortunately ageing is what the body once strong and virile does and it has no mean influence on that part of a creative person's life. I will imagine you 20 yrs from now, sitting peacefully and enjoying the tenacity of your younger days...not wishing you had done anything differently!

Well it's is simple, as we will now have concrete floor that get huge amount of winter sunlight in that main living room area our thermal mass figure went up. with the use of phase change material in the roof it to give a thermal mass effect but lot less weight. What it does is stores the energy/heat and transfers it back into room a night. You must realise that this is a very exposed site and we had to get min 6 star rating. Our insulation goes like this from roof down 1, R7 Rock wool batts 2. 90mm Phase change Material 3. to support pcm you have to use 12mm ply sheeting in place of plasterboard 4. Float concrete 5. Electric in slab heating 6. Precast tilt, but played down slabs Underslab 7. R7 Rock wool again 8. 75mm foam batts 9. Reflective foil 10. Box in around steel and make air tight as possible Also all the glass is double glazed, argon filled and thermal shield. We had all that minus pcm and failed because standard way of accessing doesn't have it in calulations. i had to go and show council a sample of the stuff an how it works. This is not cheap but we can just about say that room will sit at a constant 21 to 24 degrees all year around without need for air conditioning . Phase change article

Hi mluh You've obviously done your research on these products, so it's most likely going to come down to personal preference. As you've mentioned, a natural stone is going to come with an amount of maintenance but the beauty of Travertine is within its variation. Once sealed with a good quality sealer (I recommend Guard Industry), the maintenance is really quite low and most spills are lost within those natural variations. 99% of spills can be cleaned up without too much trouble. Porcelain, on the other hand, can be quite difficult to clean once it's been marked. That said, the external porcelains have a great non-slip texture and are very hardy when used as paving/tiles. I'm personally not a fan of using them as pool coping, but many people love it. Again, both have their advantages and disadvantages so I would recommend using the product that you're happy looking at for the next 10-20 years. - Jordan

Costs to install a pool will vary massively depending on where you're located, if it's in-ground or above ground, whether your council will approve it easily, etc etc. Salt water pools are more expensive than chlorine because all the pumps, filter etc have to be made from titanium, otherwise the salt water corrodes them. To add a heating system is a huge topic in itself! As a quick guide: Direct electric element - cheapest heater to install, very expensive to run! I don't even know if you can still get these because they're too expensive to run. Gas heater - probably the most common option. Modest install cost (maybe $2k-$3k), modest running costs. However - if you're not on a natural gas network and have to use bottled gas, the running costs will be a lot higher. Solar - Probably the most common solar pool heater these days are the 'solar mats'. Basically they're black plastic tubing that gets clipped to your roof, and the pool water just gets pumped through them. Results may vary but most people seem happy with them. Cheaper to install than evacuated glass tube-style solar panels. Basically free to run. Electric heat pump - these are like an air conditioning unit - they absorb heat out of the air, and use it to heat your pool water. They have an electric motor so use electricity to run. These are becoming very popular for pool heating. However, the actual heat output of a modestly-priced heat pump will be much lower than the same priced gas heater. This means it takes much longer to heat your pool. However, once it's up to temperature, the heat pump will be able to maintain the temperature okay. Probably a similar running cost to a gas pool heater. But if you also have electric solar panels then they will offset the cost of electricity, so these can be very economical to run in that case. The major component of heat loss from a pool is through evaporation, so make sure you keep your pool covered! I would suggest to get a few quotes from pool installers in your area and see what they say.